Life should be lived in shorts and sandals

There isn’t an awful lot of serendipity built into my writing process, but occasionally I accidentally dig up something worthwhile that I’d completely forgotten about.

As I’ve mentioned before, I use the last few days of the year to peer back at the past and to throw forward to the next. While hacking through the state of my existence, I decided to search my writing archive for the word ‘life’ – and was surprised to rediscover the following unpublished poem from 2015:

Life should be lived wearing shorts and sandals

Life should be lived wearing shorts and sandals
Dinner should be littered with corks and candles

Life is a matter of taking your chances
Making the most of your circumstances
Taking up hands at dinner-dances
Falling in love with the merest of glances

Life should be lived as much in the sea
Entwined in a hammock, or under a tree
Vows should be made down on one knee
In the dark, in a church, in Tennessee

Write your own doggerel verses
Sprinkle your talk with Shakespearean curses
Pocket your change and don’t pinch purses
Petition the government to hire more nurses

Don’t be afraid to spend time alone
Enter outdoors and exit your phone
Listen closely, you can still hear the silence
Traffic and television are an odd sort of violence

The sky is a constantly changing companion
Instead of a down, it’s an up sort of canyon
Every breath is there for exploring
Forget all I’m saying and take up drawing!

But pepper your life with shocks and scandals
Life should be lived wearing shorts and sandals

Published by

David

David Charles is co-writer of BBC radio sitcom Foiled. He also writes for The Bike Project, Thighs of Steel, and the Elevate Festival. He blogs at davidcharles.info.

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